The XTS-300™ Trusted Computer System, most recently manufactured by Getronics Government Solutions, LLC of Herndon, Va., has long been the only National Security Agency (NSA) evaluated high-assurance general-purpose computer system. Through careful design, the XTS-300 has been evaluated at the Class B3 level by the NSA according to its Trusted Computer System Evaluation Criteria (TCSEC), the teachings of which are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety. The B3 rating is proof that the system provides a very high level of security functionality. FIG. 1 provides a high-level overview of the requirements to achieve various TCSEC security classification levels. The TCSEC is also known more formally as the United States Department of Defense Standard Number 5200.28-STD, and is often colloquially referred to as the “Orange Book”.
Because of the high level of security functionality provided by the XTS-300, it has provided defense, intelligence, diplomatic, law enforcement, and other communities with an extremely secure system running on the latest generation of Intel server-class hardware. In addition, the XTS-300 leverages its commodity hardware architecture to take advantage of frequent hardware advances in the Intel® x86 hardware base and in the SCSI subsystem.
The XTS-300 is used as a platform upon which applications are built that filter data and enforce security policies. Filtering is a process which allows rules-based inspection and selection criteria to be applied to a variety of data, thus allowing approved data, where appropriate, to safely pass from one security classified level to another security classified level. Many of these programs have been called “Guards” because they guard one network from another using hardware enforced protections of the XTS-300 while still allowing selected data to flow through carefully architected and fully accredited logic paths between networks of differing levels.
While the XTS-300 has been successful, the number and nature of the computer software programs which can be run on the XTS-300 is limited by its operating system.